(car engine rumbles)
(glass shatters)
- Accidents happen.
And the team at DriveSavers deals with the fallout
of a lot of accidents.
So they sponsored this video to tour their sick facility
in California to show the process of recovering
the data from mobile devices, like iPhones.
That have gone through everything from being dropped out of
a moving car, to being thrashed by a gorilla at the zoo,
to being literally destroyed in a plane crash.
This tour is gonna be a little different though
because I'm actually in my studio at home
due to travel restrictions.
But it'll still be really cool.
(upbeat music)
Every phone recovery starts with educating the customer.
- DriveSavers data recovery, my name is Dylan.
How can I help you?
- Now the average person might think that data recovery
is similar to what the Apple store might do.
But in reality it is very unusual for data recovery
to be covered by any sort of manufacturer warranty.
And the process is totally different.
When you send a device in for repair,
it's much more economical for a company like Apple
to simply replace whatever is broken rather than spending
long hours diagnosing and fixing board-level faults.
Now this would be fine except that they see components
like the main board as one piece.
So if there's an issue with it or anything
that's attached to it, it's gone.
That means no data.
They operate this way because a manufacturer
is only concerned with preventing devices from breaking.
It's uneconomical to try to fix them once they do.
Which is why the most straightforward data recovery
operations are often, though not always, the ones where
the issue is logical rather than physical
and no hardware actually needs to be changed.
And in order to make this process as smooth as possible,
DriveSavers has actually developed their own in house tools
to take out some of the guesswork.
Something that they're now also using for T2 Mac recovery.
So when a device arrives DriveSavers' first step
is to give it a once over.
If it's boot looping, in recovery mode or it powers on
but won't actually boot up, there's a good chance
that they can connect it with a lightening cable
and perform the recovery that way.
Very convenient but also dangerous.
One of the most important parts of this discovery process
is checking the voltage and amperage of the device.
Certain readings might point to a particular chip
that's failed, which could result in a data loss
if a logical recovery is attempted directly.
It all comes down to experience.
0.8 amps or higher is typical but other readings
can be a strong indicator that it's a physical issue
and it's time to crack the casing open.
At this stage it's best to start by looking
for simple problems like shorts on the motherboard.
This can be done by freezing the logic board
with a cold spray and looking for areas
that thaw too quickly, indicating excess heat.
Or thanks to the wonders of modern technology,
it can also be done with a thermal camera.
Using this method, even very small shorts can be identified.
Although finding the source of the short
can be an entirely separate issue.
Some simple shorts are fixable.
Failed resistors can be replaced and burnt traces
can in some cases, be repaired.
As long as the technician doesn't drink
too much coffee ahead of time.
I actually asked DriveSavers
what their most important tool is.
And I was surprised to hear them say--
- Really good tweezers.
- While the particular model comes down
to personal preference, everyone there agrees that it is
absolutely essential that the ends line up really well.
Otherwise you might be transferring a component to a board
only to have it go flying out.
And good luck holding onto something like a micro jumper
if the ends don't match up absolutely perfectly.
Those puppies are thinner than a human hair.
And even the breeze from someone walking past
can blow them away, never to be seen again.
Other times the shorts are more complex or harder to get at.
If there's liquid damage, you might remove the short
only to find another one, then corrosion under the chips
and so on and so forth.
The worst is apparently milk.
Now with any corrosion, you start with a toothbrush.
If there's gunk under a chip, you remove that chip
and replace it.
If the board is completely corroded, you need to use
an ultrasonic cleaner.
Not necessarily a super strong one.
You just wanna get off as much of the gunk as you can
so that you can start to look for shorts.
Sometimes they're so bad though that when you start
with a soft toothbrush you will literally have components
just crumbling off the board.
And in cases like that, you might end up doing
a full chip swap.
Where you are basically rebuilding the phone
onto a donor device.
DriveSavers tries to source individual parts
whether new or used.
But sometimes there's no other choice but to sacrifice
a brand new device.
I mean, look, hey.
We told you data recovery ain't cheap, right?
Unfortunately, yes it gets even worse.
Aside from being a time consuming and risky operation
on components that are ridiculously fragile.
This chip swap method also has some major limitations.
Unless they could break Apple's encryption,
which DriveSavers wouldn't do even if they could,
every component with Apple's security measures baked in
needs to be restored to at least a basic level
of functionality.
The NAND Flash is what actually holds the data in an iPhone.
So obviously we need that.
Then there's the Logic Eeprom which holds the firmware
of the device.
That thing is super small about the size of
a large grain of salt.
And if it disappears, your data recovery effort is done.
And then finally, there's the CPU.
That's tied to the Eeprom and to the NAND Flash.
So for any recovery effort to be successful
it needs to be working or at least mostly working.
A pretty famous internal story at DriveSavers
is about an iPad that was pulled from a literal plane crash.
The board was so destroyed that it's a miracle
they didn't just turn it away in the first place.
But after a full transplant, as they call it.
They were actually able to get the device working enough
that with clamps on the device, to apply a little bit
of extra pressure on certain components and by emailing
the data to themselves, rather than trying to transfer it
over a cable.
Which appeared to put too much strain on the CPU
or something, they were able to recover
the needed flight recorder data.
One of their methods for these CPU transplants
is rather ingenious.
I asked them why a CNC machine is part of
their essential toolkit.
And it turns out that iPhone six and six S's have the RAM
on top of the CPU with glue surrounding them.
So if you use too much heat, the RAM can't breathe
and it'll just pop or crack.
So get this, depending on the device, they can sometimes
use the CNC to go in through the back.
Precisely cutting away the logic board leaving only
the exact dimensions of the CPU behind.
It's slower but it's a really clean way to do it
and gives a higher success rate.
Which is the most important thing.
They often prep their donor boards in the exact same way,
using their CNC from the top side to remove the CPU and RAM
and expose the pads.
Then it's a matter of aligning the solder pads
from the old chip onto the new donor board.
That is a tough thing to get just right.
I actually tried that once with a Mac book chip set
in New York and well, let's just say it's still dead.
(Linus laughs)
Fortunately DriveSavers is better at this stuff than I am.
And this kind of careful methodology has resulted
in successful full transplants on even devices
that have been driven over multiple times on the highway.
There's one that was dropped down a multistory garbage shoot
that they pulled off.
And yes, what I said before was true.
They actually managed to repair one where a gorilla,
like a real actual gorilla, got its hands on the device
when it was dropped into a zoo enclosure.
Ironically though, after all of this
DriveSavers' biggest message in this sponsored video is--
- Backup your data so we never have to recover it.
- Whether it's on iCloud, a network storage device
or a USB hard drive, a second physically isolated copy
of your important documents and media
is the best insurance policy in the case of
an unexpected disaster.
Now common failures do come from user error like folks
who think their device might be more waterproof than it is.
You know, "Hey, maybe if I just dip the camera corner
"into the water."
DriveSavers has seen plenty of final videos like that.
But also don't trick yourself into thinking,
"Well, I'm super careful it couldn't happen to me."
Bad luck can happen to anyone.
And they've seen everything!
From phones that managed to slip through the crack in
an elevator and fall all the way down the shaft.
To ones that fell out of a pocket and got stuck in
the motorized reclining mechanism of a couch.
That's one that could easily happen to me.
My phone comes out of my pocket all the time.
Their second message is to make sure
that if you didn't pay attention to message one
you're paying extra close attention to message two.
Which is to only send your device to a trusted shop.
They've seen unrecoverable cases where if it wasn't
for the ineptitude of a previous technician,
it would have been fine.
A classic example of this is iPhone six screen replacements.
They had a case where a shop put a poor quality home button
on a six S, plugged it in and shorted a resistor
that on one side, went to the home button
and on the other side, went to the CPU.
They did manage to dig out that trace and replace it.
But even though it was such a simple error
that story unfortunately ended in heartbreak.
DriveSavers' process is to use the device as intended
so a dead CPU, that's a no go.
There's no substitute for expertise and that's kinda hard
to get unless you're dealing with a lot of devices.
An example of this one was a weird update
in the fall of 2019, where particularly the seven plus
would get stuck on the Apple logo.
Which on the surface smells like a logical problem.
But then after seeing a bunch of them
DriveSavers figured out that there was a physical fix
by shorting the speaker IC that would somehow bypass
whatever that logical problem was.
So then if they grabbed all the data,
unshorted a particular resistor then performed
a factory reset and restored the data back onto the phone,
it was golden.
Logical problem, weird physical workaround.
So bottom line, back up your data.
And if you didn't, give DriveSavers a call.
They're well worth the money and after being the first
to recover data from one, they have over a decade
of experience recovering iPhones.
They don't even charge you unless they actually
recover your data.
The consult and even the shipping to them is free.
If you guys enjoyed this video, you might also enjoy a look
at DriveSavers' hard drive data recovery process.
It's very, very different and equally fascinating.
We're gonna have that linked below.
And we did that video a long time ago.
So I was actually able to physically be there.
(Linus laughs)